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It is a common view amongst the uninitiated that Stalin was a relatively unknown and insignificant figure in Russian history until Lenin’s death in January 1924. Trotsky, Lenin’s brilliant accomplice and civil war hero, seemed to be the natural replacement for Lenin. It therefore comes as a surprise to many that Stalin managed to outmanoeuvre the ‘vastly more talented and deserving Trotsky’1 to become Lenin’s successor. However, it is on

is on this issue of Trotsky being the more “deserving” of becoming the supreme power in Russia that much controversy surrounds. Despite the fact that ‘no one else in the leadership came anywhere near him as a public speaker’ and that he clearly ‘excelled as a commentator, a critic, an orator, an executor of politics and was the ideal complement to Lenin’, by 1929 Trotsky had been denounced as a Jew and a ‘Leftist’ by Stalin and the Central Committee.

Once a Civil War hero and respected commander of the Red Army, the man who had been beside Lenin during the October Revolution of 1917, Trotsky found himself relieved of his position as War Commissar and robbed of his position in the Politburo by Stalin and his loyal bureaucracy. Stalin had become ‘strong enough to expel Trotsky from the USSR’, irrespective of Trotsky’s supposed superiority as a politician and as a candidate for supreme power in Russia. However, in order to get a clearer view of why Trotsky is held in such high regard as a tactician and politician by so many historians and as the rightful (but of course unsuccessful) or at least most deserving successor of Lenin, it is necessary that his various successes are noted. Despite the fact that he was eventually thrown out of the party and expelled from Russia itself by Stalin, Trotsky saw great success and popularity during the October Revolution and the Civil War. This as well as being a most trusted companion of Lenin makes it all the more perplexing when it was instead the ‘grey blur’ of Stalinism that rose out of Lenin’s legacy.

Trotsky’s Revolutionary Successes

Trotsky, a former left-wing Menshevik and even former rival of Lenin, joined the Bolshevik party in 1917, as Lenin had, past abuse aside, become keen to ‘include Trotsky in a broad socialist campaign against the war’6. Orlando Figes states that ‘the Bolshevik cause had been greatly strengthened by Trotsky’s entry into the party’. In fact, it was probably Lenin who benefited most from Trotsky’s allegiance, as he had returned from his exile to find much opposition to his grand ideas of a second revolution against the newly established Provisional Government. Lenin had said of the February revolution in his April Theses that:

“Ours is a bourgeois revolution, therefore the workers must open the eyes of the people to the deception practised by the bourgeois politicians, teach them to put no faith in words, to depend entirely on their own strength, their own organisation, their own unity, and their own weapons.”

Lenin demanded that the ‘otherthrow of capitalism as the only way to end the war’9, and that no further support must be given to the Provisional Government. Yet upon hearing Lenin’s views on the state of affairs in Russia, Bolshevik leaders were aghast. They thought that their leader must be completely insane, or at least, he must be so far out of touch from his exile as to fail to understand the practicalities of the situation in Russia.

However, in Trotsky, Lenin found an ally who agreed with him that those who sought to work with the Provisional Government (such as the Mensheviks and most Bolsheviks) were ‘traitors to the revolution’, and Trotsky’s ability to hold his listeners ‘spellbound with his denunciations of the Provisional Government’10 and ‘extraordinary power to master the crowd’11 eventually managed to persuade public and party opinion into Lenin’s favour, namely a Socialist Revolution. Trotsky’s abilities as a public speaker were best demonstrated in his position as the Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, where he was able to make numerous appearances at party rallies and street protests to spread the word of Bolshevism to the workers and soldiers of Petrograd. Lenin himself acknowledged his worth as a revolutionary by saying of him there was “no better Bolshevik”, which certainly says something for the high regard with which Lenin viewed Trotsky.

Trotsky further showed his abilities as a tactician and a leader in actions leading up to and during the October Revolution. Trotsky took full advantage of the failure of the Kornilov Affair, which had seen not only his release but also the release of other leading Bolsheviks. Despite the fact that Kornilov’s advance had been halted by a Workers General Strike, Trotsky took the opportunity to obtain approval by the “Soviet’s Committee Against Counter-revolution” to form ‘an armed workers’ militia to defend the revolution’. It is well known in the present day that the Red Guard never fired shot in the defence of Petrograd, yet this fact was lost on the people of Petrograd. In their mobilisation to defend Petrograd, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks were able to claim themselves to be the ‘defenders of Petrograd and the revolution’ and receive the Soviets’ as well as the peoples’ recognition for this. After the Kornilov Affair, the Provisional Government was now too weak and disliked to withstand the now inevitable revolution.

According to Westwood, on the orchestration of the October Revolution, ‘organising the insurrection was mainly the work of Trotsky’. This was a direct result of his taking advantage of the Kornilov affair so effectively, for the ‘revitalisation of the Soviets in the wake of the Kornilov crisis’ also saw the ‘recalling of support for pro-coalition Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries in favour of support for Maximalists’ like the Bolsheviks. In the words of Sukhanov ‘the Petrograd Soviet was now Trotsky’s guard, ready at a sign from him to storm the coalition’, and in October 1917 the revolution took place.

Here, yet again, Trotsky played a key role, where his ‘Red Guard detachments occupied without bloodshed the central telephone exchange, railway stations and other key installations’. Kerensky and the Provisional Government were doomed as ‘few soldiers were willing to fight for his Government’, and even if they were willing to fight most were still fighting at the front. Soldiers still posted in Petrograd were loyal to the Bolsheviks, and had no will to fire on their ‘comrades’, not to mention the fact that the railways had been sabotaged on Trotsky’s orders and that Kerensky was unable to contact the Front due to the telephone exchange being cut. The Bolshevik coup in Petrograd had been successful, although perhaps ‘inefficient but almost bloodless’, thanks mainly to Trotsky’s ability to take advantage of the opportunities so carelessly thrust upon him by Kerensky and the Provisional Government.

Trotsky, A Civil War Hero?

From the beginning, the Bolshevik regime was engaged in a ‘desperate struggle for survival’. Although the Bolsheviks held a ‘considerable majority’ in the Congress after the success of the coup d’etat which was ‘sufficient to confirm in office an exclusively Bolshevik government’, they were quick to realise that in order for the one-party government to maintain power it would have to do this ‘by means of political terror’. Before 1917 their time had been dedicated to preparing for revolution, yet ‘little attention had been given’ to the details of how affairs would be organised once this revolution had been achieved. At the time of his appointment in 1917 as Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Trotsky said on what was required to be done was “to issue a few decrees, then shut up shop and go home”. Yet Trotsky had merely shown signs of the fatal ‘high-handedness’ and ‘arrogance’ that contributed to his eventual downfall, as circumstances were not to allow such a relaxed approach to government.

The Bolsheviks faced not only the wrath of the Germans but also the internal threat of anti-Bolsheviks. This ‘internal threat’ manifested itself in the form of the Russian Civil War fought between 1918 and 1920, in which the Bolsheviks (the Reds) were confronted by anti-Bolshevik forces (the Whites). During the Civil War, Trotsky established himself as both a brilliant tactician and a motivator for the Red Army. ‘The Red Army respected him’, for his frequent trips to the Front (via his notorious Iron Train) to boost the morale of the Troops coupled with his grand oratory worked to great effect. Trotsky realised the importance of morale in an army’s willingness to fight and ability to perform, and his personal visits to the Troops reassured them of the Revolution they were fighting to protect. At one point, Trotsky is documented to have ‘mounted a horse, rounded up the retreating troops and led them back into battle’28, and another account of his Civil War exploits describes how he ‘persuaded dangerous bands of deserters from the Red Army to return to the Front against the Whites’.

Westwood says of the Civil War that ‘discipline and some degree of professionalism in the Red Army was restored largely due to the energy and persuasive oratory of Trotsky’ and according to Figes, ‘he more than anyone had won the Civil War’. Yet Trotsky’s methods were criticised even by those in the Bolshevik party. Although in the eyes of many Trotsky was the ‘champion of militarisation’, his use of ex-Tsarist officers ‘against bitter opposition from party members’ as military specialists in the campaign against the Whites saw a sharp decrease in his popularity in the party. By the end of the Civil War, almost eighty-percent of the Red Army’s commanders were ex-Tsarist officers. Many ‘Bolshevik military leaders detested him’, not least because ‘many of them harboured xenophobic’ attitudes towards his ‘Jewish intellectual looks’. Trotsky’s actual contribution to the Civil War has also been called into question, where Kochan claims it was ‘the Bolshevik’s attitude to the land question which was probably the crucial factor in the civil war’, for the White generals could ‘offer nothing more than a return to a landlord economy’.

The Bolsheviks seemed like the lesser of two evils to the Russian peasants, and therefore they more were willing to support the Bolsheviks, despite the fact that given the condition of industry Lenin could not give ‘both land to the peasants and bread to the towns’. Lynch believes that the reasons for the final victory of the Reds in the Civil War are not difficult to determine, and cannot be attributed to the skill of one man. Lynch states that that White armies fought as ‘separate detachments’, and that apart from their obvious ‘desire to overthrow the Bolsheviks’ they were ‘not bound together by a single aim’. The Bolsheviks had control of the central lines of communication and of the major cites in Russia (namely Moscow and Petrograd) and also control of the railways. This allowed them a major tactical advantage over the Whites, and therefore the Red Army was triumphant in 1920. Also, Trotsky’s handling of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk proved to be one of his ‘more notable failures’, the German response to his policy of “no peace, no war” being to ‘reopen hostilities’44. However, Trotsky had ‘attained the Status of a hero’ as a result of his Civil War exploits, a status which was soon to be forgotten.

Lenin’s Testament, Bureaucracy and the Threat of Stalinism

In the years leading up to his death in 1924, Lenin had fought a losing battle against ill health as well as the increasing bureaucracy within the party. Lenin had made the same mistake as all the other party leaders by ‘underestimating Stalin’s potential power’46 and his ambition to exercise it. Stalin had been appointed as General Secretary in 1922, which unbeknown to Lenin had inadvertently ‘laid the foundations for the misfortunes which were to befall the party in later decades’47. It ‘was to prove a crucial appointment – one that enabled Stalin to come to power’. Dismissed as “the most eminent mediocrity in the party” by Trotsky, Stalin now had the power to appoint and dismiss party members, therefore allowing him to ‘gradually place congenial party members in key posts’49. After Lenin’s death, Stalin was a ‘required ally’, as he had by that time ‘been able to install many of his own proteges in the Central Committee’51. However, Stalin’s rise to power could have been halted if either Trotsky or Lenin had acted earlier. Lenin, for a man of ‘such intolerance…he proved remarkably tolerant of Stalin’s many sins’, such as his growing rudeness to himself and his brutal handling of the Georgian affair, as he believed he needed Stalin to ‘maintain unity in the Party’53. Lenin eventually came to realise the potential damage Stalin could cause, yet by then ‘it was already too late’.

“Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, has concentrated unlimited authority in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.”

During the course of the Orgburo and the Secretariat alone appointed 10,000 provincial officials, most of them on ‘Stalin’s personal recommendation’. Mistrusting formal intellectuals (like Trotsky), they were to become his ‘main supporters in the power struggle against Trotsky’. Lenin and Trotsky had attempted to oppose Stalin’s increasing influence in the party, where in December 1922 Lenin asked Trotsky to form a ‘counter-bureaucratic bloc’, quite literally aimed at killing off the Party’s ever increasing reliance on a bureaucracy. This, however, proved unsuccessful, and by 1924 ‘Stalin had amassed so much personal leverage that, irrespective of ability, he had much greater power than other leaders’58 and the party bureaucracy (that was mainly loyal to Stalin) was still firmly in place.

Before his death, Lenin produced a Testament in which he reached the conclusion that ‘no one person was fit to succeed him’, and he based his hopes on the unlikely co-operation of Trotsky and Stalin. Realising that there was now no chance of such co-leadership because of the clashing personalities of Trotsky’s ‘excessive self confidence and high handedness’60 and Stalin’s ‘rudeness’61, Lenin now openly denounced Stalin and recommended that he be relieved of his position in the Bolshevik party as General Secretary, hoping to have him replaced by a man who was ‘more patient, more loyal, more courteous, and more considerate of his comrades, less capricious’. Lenin knew that ‘Trotsky’s pre-eminence in terms of sheer ability’ made him the most fit for leadership, but Lenin also realised that the ‘apparat tended to dislike him, partly because he was an upstart Menshevik, but mostly because he attacked bureaucratisation’.

Trotsky’s ‘arrogant brilliance’ earned him no favours from intellectuals of his own generation, ‘nor did the workers favour him’66. Yet Lenin would have chosen Trotsky as his successor over Stalin without question, especially due to the way Stalin had acted towards his wife, Krupskaya and his handling of the Georgian affair. Trotsky also shared the view with Lenin of the Revolution as the beginning of World Revolution, and not Socialism in One Country. He confided in Trotsky to oppose Stalin, and proposed that he did this in the defence of the ‘Georgians before the Central Committee against the prosecutors of Stalin and others in league with him’. Lenin also personally made sure that Trotsky received a copy of his Testament in order to expose Stalin in front of the Central Committee. Trotsky, however, was to fail to perform both these things, and in so continued to play Russia into the ‘iron hands’ of Stalin.

Lenin’s Death, Trotsky’s Failures and the Inevitability of a Stalinist State

By Lenin’s death in 1924, ‘Stalin had amassed so much personal leverage that, irrespective of ability, he had much greater power than other leaders’. Yet Trotsky still had Lenin’s Testament behind him, which if presented Stalin’s chances of succession would have been ruined. He also had a mostly loyal Red Army behind him. However, Trotsky ‘underestimated Stalin’s intelligence’69 for the last time in a series of fatal decisions that would eventually see him exiled from Russia. Before the Central Committee, Trotsky failed to defend the Georgians, the ‘penultimate occasion when he could have opposed Stalin with Lenin’s prestige behind him’70. Later, Lenin’s Testament was ‘neutralised by Trotsky’s acquiescence’ as it was agreed to keep the Testament a secret because ‘Stalin had improved’.

Trotsky agreed to this mainly because he did not wish to cause a split in the Party that might lead to Civil War, despite the fact he had the Red Army behind him due to his position as War Commissar, his status as a Civil War hero and the Army’s respect for him. His main weapon against Stalin had therefore been ‘voluntarily sheathed’, and he would have to defy the Central Committee to resurrect the issue of Lenin’s Testament. Trotsky also failed make an appearance at Lenin’s funeral, where Stalin ‘stood out as the first disciple of the late leader’, and in the process disassociating himself with Lenin in the eyes of the people and the Party. With his unpopular views on ‘World Revolution’ in contrast to Stalin’s idea of ‘Socialism in One Country’, he appeared to be anti-Russian in his foreign interests, a view which was not much helped by his Menshevik background and reputation as a Jewish intellectual. Trotsky had therefore failed to act in order to prevent Stalin achieving supreme power in Russia, and it was his lack of active opposition to Stalin that saw any chance of power he had slip away from him.

The ‘End’ of Trotsky

Trotsky had given up without a fight, his past as a revolutionary with Lenin and as a Civil War hero were thrown to the wind, as he ‘lacked the ability to lower himself to the drudgery of politics’ by his refusal to associate himself with the much loathed (by him, at least) bureaucracy. Trotsky had allowed himself to be relieved of his position as Commissar for War in January 1925 without any resistance. His pride and arrogance prevented him from posing any real opposition to Stalin, and he refused to associate himself with Kamenev and Zinoviev in a united opposition against party bureaucracy until 1926. By the time that he, Kamenev and Zinoviev managed to find serious flaws in Stalin’s ‘inspirational’ plans by attributing international and domestic failures to Stalin’s theory of ‘Socialism in One Country’, it was already too late.

The greatness of Stalin had already been indented on too many peoples minds for this to be seen as significant, and for this breach of discipline there was no resistance to all three being formally expelled from the party in December 1927. Thus at the tenth anniversary of their glorious victory in 1917, Lenin’s closest comrades-in-arms saw their role within the party come to an abrupt and disreputable end. Stalin had used to his advantage the bureaucratic structure of the Bolshevik party and exploited his position to gain majority support and to shame and denounce his opposition. Trotsky was discredited, a victim of his own intelligence and arrogance, perhaps the spiritual successor of Lenin but not the actual one. It is therefore not surprising that Stalin became the successor of Lenin and the supreme ruler of Russia in 1929, and that Trotsky was formerly expelled from Russia in the same year.

76 “Socialism in One Country (1925)”, which asserted that Soviet Russia could successfully build socialism on its own. With this Stalin not only evoked massive national pride but also projected the idea of him as the saviour of Russia.